Sydney Pigden

Sydney Charles Pigden (25 April 1922  – 27 December 2017) was a Royal Air Force fighter pilot and PE Teacher.

Career

Pidgen survived well over 100 ground-attack sorties with No. 164 Squadron RAF Argentine-British, when flying Hawker Hurricane and Typhoon rocket-armed aircraft against heavily defended enemy ground targets.

Postwar, Sydney flew Spitfires and took part in the Battle of Britain flypast over London on 15 September 1945. Sydney donated his flying logbook and medals to Shoreham Aircraft Museum.

Sydney Pigden, was for 30 years a teacher at Turnham junior school, on the Honor Oak estate in Brockley, south London, where his pupils included Ian Wright, who credited Pigden with much that he subsequently achieved. In his 2016 autobiography A Life in Football, dedicated to Pigden, Wright described him as “the first positive male figure that I had in my life”.